


Knives Chau vs the world state

by weakinteraction



Category: Scott Pilgrim (Comics)
Genre: F/F, Groundhog Day, Post-Canon, Trick or Treat - extra treat, background Scott/Ramona
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-28 16:35:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5097584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knives finds herself staying over at Kim's apartment in a blackout.</p><p>Then a save point appears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knives Chau vs the world state

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ViolentFlowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViolentFlowers/gifts).



> Thanks to Kaye for very helpful beta-reading.

"Wow, Knives, I can't believe you're nineteen now," Scott says, for the fourth time this evening.

`Scott Pilgrim: first real boyfriend`   
`Current Relationship Status: so totally over him`

Kim rolls her eyes as she passes the bottle of beer she has just opened to Knives. "Leave her alone, Scott."

`Kim Pine: shared a drunken makeout session once`   
`Current Relationship Status: unknown`

Scott gasps, pretending to be affronted. "But Kim, me and Ramona, I, we--" He breaks off and glances at Knives, worried that mentioning Ramona might have upset her. A year ago, she would have had to work hard at faking indifference. Now it comes naturally.

"Where is Ramona, anyway?" Kim asks. The four of them were supposed to all be meeting here at Kim's apartment before going to Stephen and Joseph's gig. But snow has been falling heavily for several hours and Stephen texted a little while ago to say that the gig is off.

"The weather ..." Scott says weakly.

Kim punches his arm. "Because polar vortices totally reach into subspace, right. Though I suppose she is the only one of us with a real job. Maybe she's actually doing something useful."

"If my job isn't real why does it suck so much?" Scott complains, slumping deeper into his seat.

"You're a prep cook now, right?" Knives says, then takes a swig of her beer.

"I ran the kitchen single-handedly one time!"

"When Stephen was sick, along with literally everyone else," Kim says in an aside to Knives. "And it was a disaster."

The door of the small cupboard set into the wall opens by itself. "Sorry I'm late," Ramona says.

`Ramona Flowers: **COMPLICATED**`   
`Current Relationship Status: friends, weirdly`

"Hey, Knives," Ramona says. "Shame about the gig, huh?" Knives nods agreement, but then realises that Ramona is being sarcastic. Ramona deposits herself on the couch next to Scott and they share a quick kiss.

"Shatter Band could do a gig, right here in the apartment!" Scott says enthusiastically. Ramona and Knives share a look of horror. "Come on, Kim, what do you say?"

"Tragically for everyone, your girlfriend just turned the door to the cupboard where the drum kit is into a door to somewhere completely different," Kim says.

"That's not how subspace works," Scott objects.

"Yes it is!" Ramona says quickly. "In certain circumstances. It's very complicated." She ruffles his hair. "We _definitely_ can't get the drums out."

"If I'd known this apartment contained a subspace portal I wouldn't have bought it," Kim says. "But for some reason realtors don't give you those sorts of details."

"It's not so bad," Scott says. "It makes it so easy for us to visit!"

Kim rolls her eyes again and repeats, more slowly, "If I'd known this apartment contained a subspace portal I wouldn't have bought it."

"I still can't believe you own an apartment," Knives says. She doesn't know anyone else who does.

"It's like the cheapest apartment ever, and everything in it is second hand and mismatched," Kim says, sounding slightly defensive. "And my parents own it, really. Well, no, the bank owns most of it."

"It makes perfect sense for you to have one, though," Scott says. "There was no way you were going to go back to school and live in a dorm or anything like that, what with the hating everyone."

"Kim doesn't hate everyone!" Ramona objects. "She at least tolerates us."

Knives feels on edge; she can never quite tell when they're all teasing each other or not. She is saved from worrying about it, however, when the room plunges into darkness. Knives quickly realises that the street lights have gone too. With the low clouds all around, it's very dark. Knives gets out her phone: no signal, so the cell towers are down too. But the screen provides at least a little bit of light to see the others by.

"Blackout," says Kim, glancing out of the window the same way Knives did. "Great."

"OK," Scott says. "Tonight now officially blows."

"You wanna go home?" Ramona asks him.

"Is the power working there?"

"I have two questions for you, Pilgrim," Ramona says. "One: how would I know? Two: does it matter?"

"Ohhhhhh," Scott says and Knives has to overcome a temporary moment of nausea.

"We can take you, too, Knives," Ramona says. It sounds like a genuine, well-meant offer on Ramona's part, but it's also horrifyingly obvious to Knives that she'd be an enormous third wheel, turning their night into some sort of weird penny farthing/tricycle hybrid.

"Or stay here if you want," Kim says.

Knives looks at her, her face uplit by the blue-ish glow of her own phone screen. The face that appears in Knives' dreams rather more often than she can account for by sheer coincidence. The eyes that sparkle with amusement at the stupidity of the world. The cute freckles across both cheeks. The lips that she remembers the taste of as though it was only yesterday that they'd kissed.

`Kim Pine: just issued invitation to stay overnight`   
`Current Relationship Status: **UNKNOWN**`

"That would be, er, that would be ... thanks," Knives says. She cringes inwardly at her inarticulate stumbling, tries desperately to rein in her all-too-vivid imagination.

"OK, great," Ramona says. "We'll see you guys soon. Have fun!"

"Bye," Scott says as Ramona pulls him towards the cupboard door. There is a momentary whoosh as the portal to subspace opens, and then silence. Far too big a silence for Knives to handle.

Luckily Kim breaks it. "There are some candles in the kitchen somewhere. I'll go get 'em."

Kim leaves with her phone lighting the way, just as Knives' phone goes dark again. As she's about to turn it back on, she notices a strange glow in the far corner of the room. It takes her a moment to recognise it; the last time she saw a save point was when she was deciding which offer of admission to accept. She can't imagine undoing that decision now, after four (mostly) awesome semesters.

She approaches it cautiously. Ever since that time backstage at Lee's Palace, when none of them managed to save before Envy arrived, Knives has been meticulous about using them. But why has one appeared now? What is -- or might be -- about to happen?

`Save: Y/N?`

Knives takes the final step.

`**Y**`

The glow disappears; she is standing on bare floor.

Kim reappears from the kitchen. "Knives? Are you OK?"

Knives turns around to see her. "Fine, yeah, fine."

"I have candles," Kim says, holding up a big bag of tea lights from Ikea. She opens it and takes a box of matches from her pocket. She begins putting small candles on every available flat surface, lighting them as she goes. Once there are a few to light more from, Knives takes a handful from Kim and helps.

They stand back from their work and admire the apartment. For all Kim's complaints earlier in the evening that it's a tiny dump with cheap, mismatched furniture, the tiny flames make it appear warm, cosy, even romantic.

"It looks--" Knives starts to say, but at the same time, Kim asks, "Beer, or wine?"

Knives is paralysed with indecision for a moment. "Wine," she says.

Kim disappears back to the kitchen and returns with a bottle and two glasses. Knives sips at the wine to start with, but soon is knocking it back with gusto while making expansive arm gestures as part of explaining stories about her time at college. They compare notes on professors and fellow students; Kim tries to pretend that she isn't enjoying it -- her professors are terrible, the other students always leave her to do the work in groups -- but Knives can tell that she's loving the chance to use her brain for something more than loaning out videos.

Knives tries to steer the discussion around to more personal topics, but despite the increasing amounts of wine inside her still feels too nervous to say what she really wants to. Eventually, Kim says they really ought to go to bed. She gets some spare bedding out of a cupboard and puts it on the couch for Knives.

They go around the room blowing out the candles; it takes some time. "Night, Knives," Kim says as she takes the last one through to her room. Knives tries to convince herself that she didn't hear a note of wistfulness in Kim's voice, but she's sure that she did.

Knives lies on the couch, and when a few minutes later the flickering light from Kim's doorway disappears when she blows out her candle, she stares upwards, looking at nothing. Between the blackout and the thick clouds of the blizzard, it is pitch black.

This is not how she had hoped this evening might go. It wouldn't be wrong, would it, to restore the save? It's so long since she last did -- she gave herself a second go at a geometry test she made a mess of in tenth grade when a save point had conveniently appeared in the toilets just beforehand, and felt guilty for weeks afterwards that she'd cheated by knowing all the questions the second time around. She can barely remember how it's supposed to work.

Sleep eludes her. Her mind churns through regrets new and old, and she starts to wonder what she might have done differently that Kim might have responded to -- what she would do differently if she restored from the save. And then:

`Restore from most recent save: Y/N?`

Knives hesitates, but only for a moment.

`**Y**`

"Knives? Are you OK?"

"Er ..." It takes Knives a moment to realise that anything's happened. A moment ago she was lying, alone and unable to sleep on Kim's couch. Now she's back here, standing on bare floor a moment after having saved.

"I have ... candles?" Kim says, but she drops them and comes closer. "Is something wrong, Knives? You look like something's wrong."

"Nothing!" Knives says brightly. "Nothing's wrong! Let's light these candles!"

Kim looks a little confused, but they get to work and soon the apartment is filled with the soft light of the candles. Knives deliberately doesn't even start to say that they look romantic, and pretty soon they're sat on the couch drinking wine, just like before. But is Kim sitting a little closer? It's hard to remember. Knives takes her wine more slowly, keeps her arms from flailing around so much. 

They swap college stories again, and this time Kim is more expansive about what she enjoys about her course. That's progress, right? Knives tucks her legs up behind herself on the sofa and unobtrusively scooches a tiny bit closer to Kim when the opportunity presents itself. Kim doesn't move away.

Knives increasingly finds herself staring at the softness of Kim's skin in the candlelight. She thinks Kim notices, and tries self-consciously to stop, even though Kim doesn't say anything directly. That's when things start to feel awkward again, and pretty soon the night is ending the same way it did the first time: watching the single solitary light of Kim's candle go out, being left alone in the darkness.

This time it doesn't take her as long to access the save point. The knack is coming back to her. Or maybe her regret is more raw, closer to the surface, and that's what powers it. She never paid attention to this stuff in elementary school; it seemed obvious then.

`Restore from most recent save: Y/N?`

`**Y**`

She decides to try asking for beer instead of wine. They both end up very drunk. Kim falls asleep on the floor next to Knives, but it's completely chaste.

The next time, she tries not drinking at all. It doesn't go very well, because by the end of the evening the bottle is still empty.

She even tries saying "I've kissed the lips that kissed you" -- it worked the first time, after all. That time, Kim just coldly says "Good night, Knives" and stalks off to her bedroom.

On the fifth restore, her sixth time through the evening, she's starting to feel tired, at least mentally: her consciousness, awake for getting on for thirty hours, is out of sync with her bodyclock. Is there such a thing as save lag, like jet lag? This time, she tries opening up to Kim about her experiences over the last year, her evolving understanding of her own sexuality. Kim listens surprisingly sympathetically, but doesn't volunteer anything about herself that might give Knives a handle on her own feelings about that night back in the beach house. Even knowing she can restore and erase any consequences of doing so, Knives can't quite bring herself to tell Kim that it was that night that made her first realise she ought to be questioning her identity.

But just like all the previous times, she ends up feeling utterly alone, drifting into the strange mental state that lets her access the save point.

She feels herself on the verge of sleep, finally, but that almost makes getting the prompt to come back easier. One more time, she tells herself. She'll try one more time. After that she definitely won't be able to stay awake ... This is the last roll of the dice.

`Restore from most recent save: Y/N?`

`**Y**`

Knives is used to the suddenness of the transition by now, so she's ready. Or so she thinks.

`Error. Save corrupted.`

"Knives?"

She turns round. The apartment seems ghostly, unreal. Even in the darkness of the blackout, everything seems to exist in washed out hues, fuzzy around the edges.

Everything except Kim. She still seems solid, real, standing upright in a very skewed kitchen doorway. Knives runs to her and grabs hold of her, just to check that she is really there. Kim seems to be reassured by Knives's solidity too. "What's happening?" Knives asks.

Kim looks all around them carefully, taking in the wavering unreality around them. Eventually, she says, "Knives ... did you have a save point too?"

 _Too?_ Knives' stomach somersaults as she tries to process the ramifications of what Kim's just said. "Maybe," she says. Kim gives her a slightly stern look. "All right, yes."

"Oh, man, I've read about this. When two people restore simultaneously, it can corrupt both saves. It's incredibly rare. I never thought--"

"But what do we do?" Knives asks.

Kim puts her fingers to the bridge of her nose, trying to remember. "We can try a manual fix." She looks at Knives with a serious expression. "Have you ever edited a save?"

"I didn't even know you could," Knives says.

Kim gives a short laugh. "How do you think I arranged it so that my parents had enough money to pay the deposit on an apartment for me?"

"How do you do it?"

"It's like restoring," Kim says. "Kind of. What do you do when you want to restore?"

"I don't even know!" Knives says, trying to keep the note of panic out of her voice. "I just ... worry, I guess? Obsess over what happened. Didn't happen. Whatever. I haven't done it very often. Before tonight."

The look Kim gives her is unreadable. "Editing is like restoring, but you have to concentrate even harder. Really focus."

Knives tries her best, but she can't feel any change. She thinks about exactly how she would have liked things to end up, Kim's lips against hers, their soft skin pressed together. She feels herself getting more turned on, but there doesn't seem to be any change to the strange situation around her.

"You can do this," Kim says, putting a hand on her cheek. Warmth in the cold of the unreal night. The touch she's been yearning for for so long.

And there it is. She can feel it. Everything is still inflected with the subtle sense of _wrongness_ , but it's stopped changing. And it's almost as though, behind everything, she can see a simplified view, like a blueprint. Everything except Kim; Kim remains herself.

"OK," Knives says. "I think--"

"Try changing something," Kim says.

The tilted angle between the doorway and the floor is just next to her. She gets down on her knees and pushes slightly at the frame. It pops back to being vertical, as though snapping to a gridline on the blueprint. "Hey! I did it!" She stands up and does the same to the top two corners. She turns to Kim. "It's working!" She's about to kiss her when she realises that that's what her head is doing, and pulls it back.

So she's surprised when Kim leans towards her and kisses her. Knives feels as though her whole body is exploding, her lips the fuse. She kisses Kim back enthusiastically.

"That is why you were restoring, right?" Kim says when they finally break for air.

Knives nods. "Is it why you were?"

"Duh," Kim says.

Knives bites her lip. "Can I ask ... how many times?"

"You tell me first."

"Six," Knives says.

"Huh," Kim says.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"How many for you?"

"More than that," Kim says evasively. "But I could never quite ..."

Knives can feel her heart doing backflips. All this time, Kim's been feeling the same way, has been doing the same thing as her to try and make it work. Relief and excitement flood through her simultaneously. She kisses Kim again, pulling her in to hug her tight at the same time. The kiss is slower, gentler this time, but somehow even more intense.

Eventually, they break apart. "OK," Kim says. "We need to fix our saves."

"Will this ...? Will we remember?"

"Yeah," Kim says. "At least, I remember the other times I edited."

"So what do we do?"

"We can compare each other's saves to fix things," Kim says. "I think." Her face screws up with annoyance at her own incomplete memory.

"You mean, we're not seeing the same things?"

"Not quite," Kim says. "What's to your left?"

"The couch," Knives says.

"And how many cushions are on it?"

"Three," Knives says. "No, wait, one fell on the floor earlier."

"But that was after this save point."

"So there should be four."

"But I only see two."

Knives picks up the cushion from the floor where it hasn't fallen yet and the couch fuzzes slightly before coming into better focus.

"OK, now there are four in both our saves."

"I didn't see you--"

"If performing physical actions help you focus on the changes, then do them."

"But it's not necessary?"

"Not if you've practised."

Knives watches Kim's trance-like expression as she potters around the room, answering Kim's questions about what she can see, and fixing things according to Kim's descriptions where they don't match. Eventually, she comes back to her in the middle of the room, much as they had earlier (or later, from some points of view) after lighting the candles, and they admire their work. Kim's apartment is back to the way it was, in both their perceptions. But neither of them are, and that will be written into the save now.

`Coherency check in progress.`

They spend an anxious few minutes waiting for the result. Neither of them speaks, as though to do so might undo the work they've done, or worse, undo what has happened between them.

`Coherency 98.7%. Save valid.`

"We did it!" Knives says jubilantly.

"Not bad for a beginner," Kim says. "This is going to be the tricky part, though: we need to restore at the same time if we're going to both remember this."

`Restore from reconstructed save: Y/N?`

"OK," Kim says. "Three, two--"

"Wait," Knives says. "Are we going on one, or on when zero would be?"

"You know what? I'll count us in."

Knives' mind flashes back to all the times she watched Sex Bob-omb's practice sessions. She realises she knows the exact rhythm Kim will use, the exact moment she needs to choose to restore. Was some part of her subconscious paying that much attention to Kim, even then?

Before she has any time to think about it further, Kim shouts, "One-two-three-four!"

`**Y**`

Suddenly, they weren't next to each other, but standing on opposite sides of the room again, Knives on her save point, Kim coming out of the doorway to the kitchen. Has it worked? Is this Kim the same Kim she just kissed in the strange unroom? Even if she isn't, Knives knows that Kim has been rerunning the evening herself. But if she doesn't remember, how can Knives explain what she knows in a way that would convince her? She feels tense, heart racing, stomach churning.

"Knives?" Kim says. The same thing as she said every other time Knives restored. But there was something different about the tone of it. At least, Knives hopes desperately that she was right to think that.

"You have candles," Knives says.

"But somehow I don't think we need them." Kim drops the bag as she walks over to Knives, takes her hand, and leads her to the bedroom.


End file.
